Today HP launches the HP TouchPad, the first tablet based on HP's new operating system, webOS, which it acquired along with Palm exactly one year ago. HP's $1.2B initial investment in Palm, plus its additional investment over the past year to bring the TouchPad and its webOS smartphones to market, is a risky investment -- there's no guarantee that consumers will buy these products or that the consumer electronics market has room for another software platform. But the webOS investment is a risk HP had to take, in order to:

Compete with Apple. Apple owns its own hardware and its own operating system, which means it controls the experience to a greater degree than OEMs that make hardware for Apple or Google's software. With webOS, HP gets more control over the total product experience.

Differentiate itself from other OEMs making Android and Windows devices. HP wants to be more than a company that makes gray boxes running Windows. WebOS helps HP differentiate from the pack, but it's also an unknown to most consumers, and adoption is uncertain.

Hedge against PC cannibalization. In a recent Forrester report, we found that PC cannibalization from tablets has been modest so far but is likely to increase in the next six to 12 months. HP is the biggest PC manufacturer in the world, and it needs to adapt its product portfolio to avoid more disappointing quarters like this most recent one.